JKriv on the Art of the Edit, Razor N Tape and Keeping Dance Music Playful
- Undrtone Blog
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Ten years after his first edits outing on Razor N Tape, JKriv finds himself back where one of the most recognisable threads of his career began. Not because he has spent the intervening decade away from edits, far from it, but because his latest four track collection provides an opportunity to reconsider what the format means to him after another decade spent digging, producing, DJing and building one of Brooklyn’s most respected independent dance music institutions.
JKriv Edits Vol 2 is out now and available via Juno.
The distinction matters. JKriv has never treated edits as grand artistic statements in need of intellectual justification. His philosophy is much more closely connected to the reason the practice existed in the first place: DJs finding ways to make records work differently on a dancefloor.
“I’ve always felt that an edit was only to serve the purpose of making a track a bit more playable from a DJ perspective, or just rearranging an original based on personal taste,” he explains.
Ten years have sharpened the technique without fundamentally changing that thinking. Asked what separates a meaningful edit from one that merely rearranges an existing record, he laughs at the premise. “Is there such a thing as a meaningful edit? I always just try to be respectful to the original music.”
That combination of instinct, utility and respect runs through the new record, although its source material moves JKriv into slightly different territory from his previous Razor N Tape outings.
“This record is less disco-ey and a bit more clubby, with the source material all coming from the 80s and 90s.”
Rather than setting out to make a cohesive EP, the collection emerged naturally once he realised several edits he had been working on belonged together. The resulting four tracks reveal different degrees of intervention, from relatively subtle rearrangement to much more involved studio reconstruction.
‘I Feel Amor’ might sound like one of the record’s most immediate transformations, taking a familiar disco classic into Spanish language territory, but it is actually the track JKriv changed least. “It’s more of a rearrangement with a very minimal amount of drum production and EQ work to the original cover version from the 90s,” he says.
‘Love Dub’, meanwhile, gets much closer to the way JKriv personally likes to manipulate a dancefloor. Stripped back, bass heavy and deliberately patient, it refuses to give away its biggest moment too quickly.
“This one is actually probably my favourite of the four, or at least the one that I seem to play the most,” he explains. “I just really like how long it makes you wait for the big bass drop in the middle.”
There is significantly more of JKriv in its construction too, with additional drum production, acapella and effects used to reshape the source into something built around anticipation rather than instant recognition.
That willingness to withhold the obvious payoff becomes even more mischievous on ‘Cuando Bailo’. Its source material should be immediately familiar to plenty of listeners, but instead of simply delivering the recognisable moments, JKriv spends much of the track dancing around them.
“I thought it was fun to bring in the ridiculous Spanish language version acapella and turn it into a club track that teases out the very recognisable parts of the original song, but never quite goes THERE.”
It also exposes something increasingly important to his approach. Dance music does not always need to carry itself with complete seriousness.
“There’s always room for a bit of cheeky humour in music,” he says. “Music is joyous and things don’t always have to be so serious.”
The final track has its own story. JKriv first heard the obscure, Prince adjacent record behind ‘Dance Sexy’ through a friend years ago, before unexpectedly stumbling across a copy himself.
“I was ecstatic when I found a copy in a dollar bin.”
Working from a B side mix, he rebuilt it with substantial additional drums and his own keyboard parts recorded on a Juno 106, pushing the original into darker, hypnotic club territory.
For all the decisions made in the studio, however, JKriv still considers the dancefloor the place where an edit ultimately proves itself.
“What is an edit if it doesn’t work on the dancefloor?”
He regularly tests unfinished versions during his sets, using the response and, just as importantly, the physical sound of the record in a club to identify things that are difficult to judge in isolation.
“You always hear things in the mix or learn things that could work better in the arrangement.”
Perhaps that sensitivity can be traced back much further than his history as a DJ. Before Razor N Tape, before the edits and before JKriv became an established name across disco and house, he was a trained jazz musician and live performer. He has now been studying music in one form or another for almost 35 years.
That experience inevitably shapes the way he hears records, although he is reluctant to reduce it to technical knowledge.
“I think it heavily shapes everything I do, probably in more ways than I even realise,” he says. “In the end, I think the most valuable qualities are feel and instinct.”
Those two ideas could just as easily describe the development of Razor N Tape itself. What began with edits has grown across more than 150 releases into a platform increasingly centred around original music, while its Brooklyn record shop has given the label something that cannot exist entirely through releases, streaming platforms or social media: a physical community.
“The shop has been a wonderful project,” JKriv says. “In a way running a record label is about building community, and the shop is a very real manifestation of that, which is extremely gratifying and rewarding.”
The label’s evolution has not required an increasingly complicated set of rules either. Its remit has broadened considerably, but the filter remains remarkably simple.
“We really don’t have many restrictions other than finding music that we love and want to share with the world.”
There is an interesting tension there. Razor N Tape is now more interested in original music and supporting artists actively contributing to contemporary dance culture, yet the edit remains part of its foundations. Its edits series has also remained deliberately vinyl only from the beginning.
Part of that decision comes from the complicated rights landscape surrounding edits, but there is also something more deliberate behind keeping these records physical.
“It’s of course partially a rights thing, but also a bit of a choice to make them a bit more special.”
JKriv is acutely aware of the questions around authorship that surround edit culture. As an artist, songwriter and musician himself, he understands the other side of that conversation and sees respect for the people behind the source material as essential.
“I’m never really intentionally trying to obscure the work of the original artist or take credit in any way,” he says. “In the end, these are just kind of fun DJ tools meant to be shared and enjoyed on the dancefloor.”
That description feels telling. After decades spent accumulating musical knowledge, releasing records, touring, collaborating and helping build a label with international reach, he still talks about music in fundamentally uncomplicated terms. Does it feel right? Does it work? Is it something worth sharing?
There are still larger ambitions ahead. Remarkably for someone with such an extensive catalogue, JKriv has never released a full length solo album.
“That is definitely something on my radar and hope to realise in the near future.”
Until then, returning to Razor N Tape’s edits series ten years later feels less like looking backwards than checking in with an idea that has followed him throughout his career. Technology changes. Labels grow. Record collections expand and tastes move with them. Yet the fundamentals JKriv describes have remained surprisingly stable.
Respect the record. Trust your ears. Leave room for personality. Test it where it matters. Then let the dancefloor decide...
